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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010197" data-attributes="member: 18387">After 7 months of mostly-weekly playing sessions, we're about half way through.  Hommlet is long forgotten (and probably razed by the forces of evil).  Forces of evil have probably detonated the world by now, actually, having managed to send the characters -- none of which have any ranks in sense motive -- off on countless goose chases.  So on the one hand, the score is very much influenced by my players.  On the other, who's to say your players will fare any better?Ultimately, however, my rating comes down to this:  If there's so much "on the line," then how do we cross the line?  The campaign never lines that up (City of the Spider Queen does this very nicely, for comparison) and as a result, the PCs have no urgent need to save the world.  That's an unforgiveable flaw in my book -- evil cults aren't supposed to wait for heroes to come try to foil them.  Period.  Didn't they ever read the list of things to never ever do when being evil?Now for the serious spoilers... - My players did not do well in Hommlet.  Two of them got arrested for murdering a cultist and the whole party spent over half a month investigating the doppelganger's accusations that his assistant was acting strangely.  Oh, and they told the wizard they rescued to piss off, they didn't need his help.  While having a detailed city is nice and all, I expect that many newer players will be caught off-guard by the spots of action in sleeply little Hommlet.  Of course, my players spent two hours looking at a chair (with nothing special about it; it was broken) and an entire session with a shocking button puzzle that the rogue could have taken 20 on because the required reflex save was so low, so your milage may vary. - I had to force-feed my players a mission in the direction of the middle part of the campaign because they missed the (as near as I can tell) random encounter that points players to the big elder evil mines.  They saw the person skulking about, but they decided to go off the other way and catch up to her later.  'Cept she was a random encounter, so she wandered off. - The round dungeon is kind of flimsy.  It's an interesting concept, but the ultimate result is that a very thourough party will encounter a whole lot of encounters that aren't really challenging for them at all (as the EL ratings are somewhat balanced between the top and bottom of the circle.  Oh, and the Blade Spirit (looks like something out of the original Star Trek) is also a bit trippy -- be sure you know exactly how it works before starting. - Temple politics are poorly defined, and they only get worse with random non-temple forces in the mines.  Who hates who?  Who tolerates who? That sort of thing. - There's a lot of information that simply doesn't appear to be available to players -- like the actual name of the evil deity which has all sorts of cool effects if used at appropriate times throughout the adventure.  I think they'll pick up on it when they're 2/3rds of the way through... assuming they make their will saves... - The middle of the mines springs a whole lot of nastiness on the players, much of it in the form of "Now you need to make a Will save against this altar here... 18?  Too bad, it ate your soul so now you need to make a new character." (I've had the party Shaman warn the other characters that areas of strong negative energy will require strong wills to survive and introduced a weenie version of Oriental Adventures' "Taint.") - The map scale is 10' little squares instead of 5' little squares -- so every door is 10' wide?  It just doesn't make much sense, let alone transferring well to a battle mat. - There's an editing error that mentions the name of one of the villians that's in the room just beyond where the players are in the Earth section of the temple.  The players have never heard of this NPC and wouldn't know him from Tharuzdin -- at least not without a valid photo id.  Nitpick, but the players spent a good 10 minutes discussing the implications before the wizard yelled "Fireball" and wiped out the bugs that were the focus of conversation. (Thank God!)  But now I'm getting nit-picky. - It appears that the characters are going to get themselves annihilated again before the end of the campaign because there's a segment with a couple of iron golems in it.  Nicely tucked away as part of an ambush near the end.  They're gonna hate me. - But the worst part of it is that the characters could go off and join the circus and the world would never end because the cultists are waiting for the characters to try to foil them, as I mentioned before.  In City of the Spider Queen, there's a timetable for world domination, and any characters in need of a vacation had better think again.  Here, there's no such thing -- it's all set at the characters pace, where they want to go, what they want to do, yadda yadda yadda.  It's not an evil cult of world destruction, it's a freakin' tourist trap!Overall, I get the general impression that so much of this adventure was spent in Planning that they forgot to ensure that all of the foundations were there when they went to execute it:  Who are the players working on locking away forever and ever; When do they need to get it done; How does the cult of lunatics grow and prosper; Why has nobody wiped them out yet; and Where the heck are they, anyway?Compare this to the low-level Freeport series -- yeah, Freeport was predictable, but at least my players never spent an entire session frustratedly wandering about the countryside because a cultist doppelganger told them to.</blockquote>

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